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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Even Little Children Could Speak English

Om Malik: Chrome OS: What Is It Good For?: The boot-up is extremely fast, and the log-on process is smooth and speedy ..... what you see is essentially the Chrome web browser. ...... The user experience expects us to come to the idea of using browser tabs instead of apps ..... The biggest challenge for Google’s Chrome OS is going to be fighting against many life-long habits of using a desktop OS. ..... there’s one thing the device does very well: let you use Google apps, especially Google Docs, Gmail and other cloud services (from Google) without a problem...... My more portable, 2.13 GHz MacBook Air is the machine I like, and even as I spend a lot of time inside the browser, I prefer a desktop with the Chrome browser and raw power..... As a consumer, one is going to find Chrome OS very limiting, especially since have some pre-conceived notions about what a personal computer is supposed to do. .... Google will be best suited to focus Chrome OS and all its energies on business buyers — call centers, retail outlets and airlines to start with — and forget about the consumers.

I am reading this review of the Chrome OS by Om Malik and I am reminded of a joke about Jung Bahadur Rana. So this guy was Prime Minister of Nepal several hundred years back, probably the most colorful character in Nepal's political history.

He went on a six month visit to England. Yep. The guy was gone for six months. Travel was slow back then. He had to go by ship. He had an elaborate entourage.

The joke goes, when he came back, some people asked him what amazed him the most in England. He said he was mighty impressed by the country at large, but what he found the most impressive was that even little children could speak English.

Om Malik feels the same about the Chrome OS laptop. Om Malik is a prisoner to the PC/desktop paradigm. So when he feels the elephant's limbs, he exclaims, "It's a tree trunk, it's a trunk!"

Om Malik: Google’s Big Problem: It Ain’t What You Think: Televisions, phones, productivity applications and even Google’s own local pages are less about search and more about engagement: something not core to the company’s corporate DNA. .... the Chrome OS interface “is rough around the edges” ...... When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. .... these new platforms are about bringing information to you. They are about discovery, not search.

TechCrunch: On The Road With Cr-48: The Chrome Notebook Is Both Shiny And Tarnished: the hardware is pretty bad ..... traveling — something which a Chrome notebook should be perfect for. ..... when compared to the new MacBook Air, this thing looks like a bloated dog. ..... Okay, so I took it out of the box and laughed. But then I opened the lid. Immediately, the thing booted up. No need to press the power button. ..... I was ready to go pretty much instantly. ... Now I was impressed. Very impressed. This is absolutely the future of computer set-ups. ..... It’s so much worse than any other trackpad I’ve ever used in recent memory, it’s almost unbelievable....... Every time I point at something and click down, the cursor moves below or above where I had originally pointed. ..... Two finger scrolling? It’s perfect if you like randomly jumping to various parts of webpages for no reason. .... After a day, I was frustrated. But after two days, I was really, really liking Chrome OS. And even certain things about the Cr-48 specifically. ..... every computer should absolutely have a search button in place of caps lock ...... On the Cr-48, I think the search button rivals the spacebar for my most-often-hit key. YouImage via Wikipedia click it and it launches a new tab reach to search away in the omnibox. It’s fantastic. ..... the performance of Flash on the Cr-48 was unacceptable ...... even beyond Flash, the Cr-48 just feels very slow when compared to any other modern computer ...... the Cr-48 reminds me a lot of the G1, the first Android phone Google shipped (with HTC) a couple years ago. They both were clearly step one of a platform that would quickly evolve. ..... the boot-up time and the battery life. Both are excellent. ...... from zero to working in 30 seconds. ..... the new MacBook Air, with its new solid state drives, goes from zero to working in about 18 seconds ..... the Air runs circles around the Cr-48 in just about everything else when it comes to performance. ..... removes several layers of junk that most people these days never use on a computer. ..... roughly 95 percent of what I do on a computer these days is in the web browser. Of the other 5 percent, 4 percent of it could probably be done in the browser too .... Chrome OS is worthless without connectivity .... smartphones have and will continue to help us with this transition. The assumption of always having a connection to the web is now built into most of our daily lives. .... It’s Internet or nothing. It’s bold. ..... a big competitor for the Chrome notebooks may end up being the new MacBook Airs ..... both brilliant and bewildering. It’s both the future and a nightmare